


New Beginnings and Inbetweens

by soldierwitch



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-22 07:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/soldierwitch
Summary: It's New Year's Eve in Roswell which means drinks and words exchanged. To new beginnings, inbetweens, and all that stays the same.
Relationships: Alex Manes/Kyle Valenti, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Max Evans/Liz Ortecho
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	New Beginnings and Inbetweens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CypressSunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/gifts).



> Happy new year, Cypress! I hope you enjoy this fic. Much love, babe!

New Year’s is a holiday the people of Roswell show out for mainly because it’s a small town. Any excuse to hold a shindig is an excuse worth having. After all something has to make the time go by and nothing makes it go by faster than drinks, food, and money exchanging hands. Hence the theme of 2020’s New Year’s Ball: Casino Royale.

Alex, ever efficient, has had his tux for weeks. Two years ago he would have chosen a classic black: well tailored and fitting him like a glove. But while his eye for detail didn't get put in storage with his Air Force uniform, his need to conform did. If he's stepping out, he's stepping out in style-- _ his _ style.

Smoothing the sleeves of his velvet jacket, Alex adjusts his black waist coat in front of his floor length mirror. He’s happy he went with a deep purple jacket and shirt. The black silk bow tie with the white polka dots might be a bit much, but it’s fun, and it’s taken him years to let himself have fun. He smiles when he catches Kyle leaning against the door jamb in his own suit.

Kyle looks like trouble. The good kind. The type of trouble that is sure to see him pressed up against the wall in an empty hallway with Alex’s hands in his hair some time tonight.

“Black looks good on you,” Alex says, fastening a small silver hoop in his ear.

“Black looks hot on me,” Kyle says, pulling on the front of his jacket. His suit complements Alex’s with its darkness. All black everything down to his watch and cummerbund. 

Alex rolls his eyes but smirks when he catches the way Kyle’s eyes trail down his body. Turning around, he leans against the dresser and folds his arms. 

“And how does purple look on me,” he asks.

Kyle straightens. “Do I really need to answer that, Manes?”

“I don’t know, Valenti, you tell me?”

Kyle’s eyes glint with the challenge. He saunters over to Alex and rests both his hands on the dresser, bringing their faces close.

“You look good when you look like yourself,” Kyle says. “Doesn’t matter the color.”

“And when do I look hot,” Alex asks, pulling Kyle closer by his belt.

“Every damn day,” he answers and then kisses Alex with more heat than they have time to quench.

\---

“Guerin,” Maria yells, tapping her fingers on the bar. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late.”

“Hold your pony,” Michael yells from the back room. 

“That wasn’t funny the first time you said it, and it’s not funny now.”

“It’s not meant to be funny,” Michael says, head down as he walks out from the back. “It’s meant to annoy.”

When he raises his head, Maria is staring. Mid pop of gum staring. In danger of swallowing her gum, her tongue, and her wit staring.

“What,” Michael asks, self-conscious, which isn’t new to Maria’s ears but still strange coming from such a cocksure man.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “You just clean up better than I imagined.”

“And what did you imagine,” Michael asks, confidence slowly returning to his voice and posture.

Maria takes him in. A velvet teal shawl collar jacket definitely wasn't it. The white t-shirt she figured was as an option, but those are new black jeans and she’s fairly certain he’s wearing his good black boots...and they have silver spurs on the back of them.

Grimacing, Maria asks,” If I said denim on denim how much would you hate me?”

“DeLuca,” Michael says, affronted.

“I know,” she says. “I know, but, you love a denim on denim moment.”

“It’s New Year’s!”

“I know!”

Laughing, Michael pulls Maria into his arms. 

“DeLuca,” he starts. “Are you telling me you were planning on looking like  _ that _ while I stood next to you in all denim?”

Maria nods, laughing, too. “I’d prepared myself for a denim shirt and your least dirty jeans. You don’t like fuss, and I’m just happy to be out from behind the bar for the first time in weeks. The holidays mean lushes and cash, you know that. And if I thought I’d be making any money here tonight, this dress would be going to waste while I pour drinks and corral drunks.”

“And what a dress it is,” Michael compliments, giving Maria twirl. Black, polka-dotted, sheer, off the shoulder with a deep cleavage bearing vee and a floor length skirt that’s layered and ruffled at the hips while showing off her legs, Maria’s dress is a lot just like she is and yet somehow it works. 

Smiling, Maria says, “What do you say, cowboy? You up for painting the town red?”

“Or black and blue,” Michael says with a shrug and a quirk to his lips. He plucks a white rose from the vase sitting on the counter and puts it behind her ear as he pushes a curl out of her face. “I’m game if you are.”

\--

The party is in full swing as Liz leans against a decorative pillar. The Roswell Foundation has really done an amazing job transforming the town’s largest banquet hall into a casino to rival Vegas for the night. She’d lost at blackjack and poker, but won it back playing Russian roulette and decided to take a breath.

“Drink for the lady in red.”

Liz turns, smile wide on her face as she takes the tumbler of water Max offers her. 

“Maria has you calling me that, too, huh,” Liz asks, taking a sip of her water.

Max answers her smile with his own. “If the color fits,” he says. “Mind if I take in the view with you?”

Liz shakes her head no and settles into comfortable silence with him. For a moment, she watches him as he watches the crush of people laughing and throwing dice, grumbling as they fold, and pulling each other onto the dance floor.

It’s been two years since she’d come home and a year since she pulled Max from the clutches of death and placed him right back at her side. Some nights she wakes up and spends the rest of the hours watching him sleep. When they were kids she used to watch him all the time and fall quiet whenever she needed a moment of peace. 

It’s the same now as it was then except his backwards cap has been retired and for tonight his button up has been replaced with a white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows and an undone black bow tie. 

Liz likes that the black stripe going up the side of her red tapered pants matches the stripe going up his black suit pants. And she’s pretty sure he likes her heels and black lace bustier judging by how handsy he got in the alcove between coat check and the bathroom. 

“If I wanted to disappear for a bit what would you say,” Liz asks.

Max pulls his phone out of his pocket and sends off a quick text.

“I’d say lead the way.”

With a smile, Liz grabs his hand. They slowly start making their way out of the crowded venue and set their empty tumblers down on a table. They wave goodbye to Kyle and Alex who are chatting with the band on their break.

\---

Maria’s phone buzzes in her hand. She smirks down at it after reading the message.

Michael comes up behind her, wraps his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her shoulder.

“Saw your face,” he says. “What’s got your mind in the gutter?”

“Max texted me,” she says. “He and Liz are gone for the night. Told me to tell you bye.”

“And that’s why you look like the cat that got the cream?”

Maria turns around in Michael’s arms, throws her own around his shoulders. “Nope,” she says popping the ‘p’. “You didn’t see them near the bathrooms. Your brother looked like he forgot he’s surrounded by polite company.”

Michael screws his face up. “TMI, DeLuca.”

She rolls her eyes and swats at his shoulder. “Oh, please,” Maria says. “Those two going at it means a chance for a power failure somewhere which means you get the phone calls and the cash that comes with it. Am I supposed to pretend you don’t see a windfall in your near future?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael says feigning ignorance.

Maria shakes her head but smiles with it. “You’re full of it.”

“Maybe,” Michael says, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket and pulling out a roll of money. “But I’m also flush with cash.”

Smile tipping toward devious, Maria asks, “Who’d you work?”

“Racist Tom, Frank, and Bryan.”

Michael looks down at the silver bag dangling from Maria’s wrist. “I showed you mine,” he says. “Now you show me yours.”

Maria pulls out a roll of money of her own. “I prefer the card games,” she says. “Less chance, more strategy.”

“Mhm,” Michael hums taking both their money rolls and tucking them in Maria’s bag. “That’s what I tell them when they lose. It’s all about the strategy. Clear mind, math skills, can’t lose.”

“Truer words, Guerin,” Maria says. “Truer words. Oh, look, the band’s back from break. What do you say we work on your two step?”

“I say, I’d rather be hit by a meteor.”

“Noted,” Maria says, stepping back. “Well, while you wait for that one in a million chance, I’m gonna go cut a rug.”

As she walks away, Maria looks back over her shoulder and says, “Maybe I’ll find some poor sod to do the jitterbug with me,” then winks. She saunters off and leaves Michael regretting his decision instantly.

When a waiter passes by with a tray full of champagne, Michael grabs a flute, downs it quick, places the glass back on the tray, and follows after Maria.

“Hey, DeLuca, wait up,” he says. “I can’t jitter, but I can bug.”

Maria turns back around. “Me, you mean. You can bug me.”

“You got it,” Michael says with a wiggle of his eyebrows and throws his arm around Maria’s shoulders, turns her around, and leads her to the dance floor. “Now which foot am I allowed to step on?”

“Neither of them, Guerin.”

“Both you say,” he says, looking down at Maria. “I can do that.”

Maria tickles Michael’s side causing him to laugh loud enough to draw the attention of a few guests, but he’s too busy chasing after Maria to notice.

“I’m going to get you for that.”

“Promises, promises, Guerin,” Maria says stepping on the dance floor. “But I hear a lot of talking and very little action.”

“Oh, I’ll show you action,” Michael says once he catches up to her. He grabs her and leads her to the middle of the dance floor.

A slow song begins to play.

Michael presses close to Maria. “If you lead, I’ll follow,” he says.

“You think you can keep up with me, Guerin?”

“I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job so far,” Michael says.

“Yeah, you’ve been decent,” Maria says, seriously and then cracks when Michael gives her kicked puppy dog eyes. She laughs and cups his cheek. “Michael, my feet are still intact and so is my heart. You’re doing fine. And I’d like to think I am, too. You’d tell me if that weren’t the case, right?”

Michael nods. “I have both my feet,” he says. “And my heart’s good, too.”

“See, we’re two complete people,” Maria says. “No foot injuries, no heartbreaks. Soon we’ll be full of that bourbon I know you have stashed in your glove box. And we’ll have a whole new year to look forward to.”

“I’m not looking forward to anything, but you right now,” Michael says, resting his forehead against Maria’s.

“Smooth talker,” Maria whispers, heart pounding a bit at his words.

“Is it smooth talking if it’s true?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t decided.”

“Think on it,” Michael whispers. “Then get back to me.”

Michael kisses Maria and their slow dance turns into a sway.

\---

Alex finds Kyle outside sitting on the back steps of the building. A beer bottle is between his legs.

“Five minutes turned into fifteen,” Alex says, coming to a stop in front of him.

“Sorry,” Kyle says, leaning back on his hands, gaze fixed on the stars. “I just needed some air.”

“I could have gotten some air with you.”

“You were doing your producer thing,” Kyle says with a shrug. 

“Kyle, look at me.”

It takes him a moment but when he does, Alex can see that Kyle’s eyes are slightly rimmed with red. They aren’t foggy, so it’s not drink, and Kyle doesn’t smoke.

“Talk to me.”

Kyle shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“If it was nothing,” Alex starts. “We’d be losing a hand of poker right now. Nothing doesn’t put you on a step as far from the party as you can be without actually leaving.”

Kyle laughs, it’s low and short lived. He takes a swig of his beer and laughs again when Alex plucks it out of his hand and finishes it off.

“I’m supposed to be the moody one,” Alex says. “You’re supposed to be the one that won’t shut up. This role reversal is unnatural, so talk, Kyle.”

With a sigh, Kyle says, “It’s New Year’s.”

“Yeah, I know,” Alex says, gesturing at their suits. 

“No, I mean,” Kyle trails a hand down his face and then grabs Alex’s hand. “Sit for a moment, okay. I just…”

Alex sits and rests his hand near Kyle’s. He wraps his pinky around his. “What?”

“In a few minutes it’ll be 2020,” Kyle says. “It’ll be a new decade, and the first one I’ll be starting without my dad.”

“Kyle…”

“It didn’t really hit me until now,” he says. “I’ve gotten used to starting a new year without him being there to ring it in with me. New Year’s wasn’t high up on his favorite holiday list. And we weren’t the kind of family that made a huge deal about the end of the year. But he liked watching the ball drop.”

“On December 31st, 2009,” Kyle continues. “My dad looked at me with five minutes to go before midnight and said, “New decade, new slate, Kyle. What are you going to do? Who’re you going to be?” And I froze. I was 19 going on 20 just as cocky as ever, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do beyond getting the number of the girl who worked the register at Barry’s Books. And I didn’t know who I wanted to be. I never did give him an answer and now we’re knocking on the door of another decade.”

Alex takes a moment to respond and then he says, “Well, you became a doctor, and somewhere along the way, you became a good man. Jim’s question didn’t have a right or wrong answer, Kyle. And I don’t think he expected you to answer him anyway.”

“None of us know who we’re going to be,” he continues. “Or what we’re going to do over the next ten years. I think Jim just wanted you to know that you could be anything, you could do anything. And he’s right you know. A new decade does mean a new slate. What do you want to do with yours?”

Kyle thinks on it and tangles his fingers with Alex’s. “I want to kiss you when the ball drops,” he says. “And then I want to take you home and fall asleep in your bed. My mom believes that who you’re with on New Year’s is who you’ll be with for the rest of the year. I want to be with you. I wasn’t ten years ago, and I think my decade was poorer for it.”

Alex knocks his shoulder with Kyle’s and smiles as he leans his head against his. “Kyle Valenti,” he says. “I think that may be your best line yet.”

Kyle laughs. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Alex says and squeezes his hand. “Of course, it’s a yes. I want to be with you, too.”

“Cool.”

“Cool,” Alex repeats.

“Mockery is the highest form of flattery, Manes,” Kyle says.

“Keep telling yourself that, Valenti.”

\---

Liz is sitting on the counter in Max’s dress shirt eating vanilla ice cream out of the tub, and she’s so happy she could burst. With a fresh mark over her heart, she can feel the same happiness lighting Max up as he makes himself a cup of tea.

The TV is flashing between the anchors on air in Time Square and the crowd below is bundled up and awaiting the countdown that’s set to begin in two minutes. Everyone on the screen is a mix of happy, cold, and tipsy, their cheeks flushed with winter’s kiss. Liz has had the New Year’s in New York experience. It was fun but ultimately not her scene.

When she was in her early twenties she thought everything had to be loud to be good. She needed to sing the loudest and dance the hardest. Her nights out had to be raucous and her romances needed to be explosive. Without Rosa, she felt like she had to live for two. Rosa couldn’t salsa until 2 am, so she had to do it for her. Her sister wasn’t going to be playing out a melodrama with a boy whose attention she wasn’t going to want past 6 months so she had to live through it for both of them.

Living outside of Roswell, finding the best and worst parts of herself, was about her, but it was also about Rosa. What she wished for her, what she dreamed for her because all of her wishes and dreams were taken in the crash that stole her life. But by the time she’d hit her mid twenties, Liz had grown tired of loud, she didn’t want to dance, and she’d settled for a kind man who made sense in her life but didn’t make her heart feel anything.

Coming home in her late twenties felt like taking a step backward, but she knows now that it was a step forward. She’s always going to be a woman who can’t stay put. Physically or emotionally, she is on one track and then the next , moving from thing to thing. But Max moves with her. When she bends, he bends. And when he breaks, she breaks. They’re a unit in a way she’s never had before. It used to scare her, but then he died, and she realized there were worse things than fear.

Liz had known absence before. She’d experienced it with Rosa. But Max had taken more than a piece of her with him, he nearly took it all. Rosa was vital; she was home, but you can live anywhere with anyone. She could carry Rosa with her wherever she went. Max was vital in a different way. He was like air and without him she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t take a step, she couldn’t move. It was anger that drove her. At him, at herself, occasionally at Rosa which wasn’t fair because she’d lost someone, but Rosa had lost her life. Anger, however, doesn’t care about logic or rational. It just burns, and she used it as fuel to get back what was stolen from her.

But that kind of anger doesn’t extinguish once it’s gotten what it wants. Not when it’s burned hot for so long and without reprieve that it’s used to consuming every thought and every action. She got Max back, but she couldn’t let go of her anger, and it nearly cost her him again. It took talking. More talking than she was willing to do at first because she hadn’t really talked for months without him there. At least not the kind of talking that required her to be vulnerable about herself in moments where she wasn’t leashing her anger.

Max told her to be mad. To yell, to scream, to throw things. He said, “Set the world on fire. Turn it to ash, and you will find me standing in the embers. I’m not going anywhere.” 

She hurt him by taking space, but she couldn’t hurt him by taking up with someone else. Liz didn’t want anyone else. Couldn’t want anyone else. She’d had balance. Someone who understood her. Someone who saw her. And she’d understood and seen him in return. Trying to be with someone other than Max would have went the same way as breathing from an oxygen tube. It would have been bottled air. Maybe better, richer, cleaner. But it wouldn’t compare to standing on the edge of a cliff and taking a deep breath in. 

Liz had done love by halves and quarters. Her relationship with Max was the whole thing. She couldn’t go back to fractions of people and pieces of herself. So, she took space and then she took time until she found herself on his doorstep one morning asking him if he could take her angry while she found a way to accept the things she couldn’t control.

It took months of coughing and choking and vomiting up her anger. And Max stood in the fire with her. Sometimes they both screamed and yelled and cried. Sometimes they fucked. Other times they made love. There were times when he was more good to her than she felt she deserved. And there were others where she knew she was more good to him than he had a right to. But that was love, the whole of it. 

She relearned how to be quiet without stewing. And how to lean on him without fearing he was going to disappear. Liz found balance, their equilibrium once more. 

As the crowd counts down Liz says, “Say it again.”

10...9...8...

Max smiles and puts his mug of tea down and takes her tub of ice cream, setting it down on the counter as well.

7...6...5…

“Yes, Elizabeth Ortecho, I’ll marry you.”

4...3...2…1! Happy New Year!

And the crowd screams as Max leans in to kiss a smiling Liz.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
